Featured Artist: Candyce Copp Grisham

Today I'm pleased to feature the wonderful work of Candy Grisham.  I love her earthy colors and different ways of featuring botanicals.  I hope you'll take a few minutes to browse through her blog  candyce54.blogspot.com !

1. Who are you and where do you live? 
Candyce Copp Grisham.  I live in Washington, MO outside of St. Louis 

2. Tell us a little bit about your artistic journey and how you got started? 
I have been sewing all my life and self taught to quilt from high school.  It's in my blood and genes.  As I have continued, I find using the traditional but adding a twist or a new take has appealed to me.  I have sought out new tools, new methods but always seem to bring a bit of my traditional background in somewhere and somehow. 

3. How do you describe your work? 
Ever-changing.  I still haven't settled on a style that I can say is what I always do.  I love to try new techniques, to make them my own vision and to express my joy with fabric and texture. 

4. Do you have any favorite techniques or approaches?

 I tend to work rather intuitively.  I love to learn new approaches, to bend the rules a bit to make something that pleases me. 

5. What do you want to communicate with your work? 

Nature and color.  Architecture and graphic modern.  Traditional and contemporary.

6. What methods, or lifestyle tips, or time management tips do you find helpful to producing work?

 I work in small bits of time whenever possible.  I find that if I have 10-15 minutes I can get a lot done.  I also work on different projects at once as they are often in different stages of development and I can fit them to my mood

7. What kind of studio/workspace do you have and what features of your surroundings are most helpful for your productivity/work?

I have 3 different areas of work space:  sewing with machine and fabric, messy with paints, screen-printing and dyes and my long arm machine space.  This way I can keep different projects in the works without overlapping or getting too messy. 

8. Which artists, other individuals or subjects currently inspire you?

 Elizabeth Barton always - her design and color style, her buildings.  Stephen Redfern (English artist) for her fabric creations and books, Anything to do with maps,  Deborah Boschert for her collages 

Thanks so much to Candy for sharing!

Regional Meeting

Hi All,

I hope you guys can attend the upcoming SAQA meeting for our region.  It's being held Saturday September 14th in Kansas City.  Ada and Dora and the other meeting organizers have put a lot of work into the event and it should be tons of fun.  We'd love to have more people sign up to attend. Here's the info!

Fiber Arts Show in Topeka

Sharon Bass just sent us this announcement about a current ongoing Fiber Arts show in Topeka featuring many of our regional SAQA members.  I encourage any of you in the surrounding area to check it out!

Just remember to email me at any time if you have an upcoming show to publicize or solicit entries for.  I'd love to share it in this space!